This TV does not permanently "record" programs to a USB drive as such. It only has a "temporary" time-shift function. If you press the time-shift key and then go and have dinner for say 30mins, the TV will start recording to a connected USB flash drive. When you return, you hit the PLAY button to start watching your program again from the time you hit the Time-shift key. Once you hit the STOP button you can no longer watch the program as you have ended the time-shift function. You should use at least a 4GB (Class 6 minimum) USB flash drive. The TV records 15min per 1GB so 1 hour maximum on a 4GB flash drive.

The TV wants the USB device to be formatted FAT32. It can only handle up to 8GB of external memory for a maximum of 2 hours recording time and it has to be *fast* to record HD programs. I tried a couple of memory sticks and the TV said neither were fast enough for HD.

This function looks to be pretty limited and a bit of gimmick anyway. I'd recommend getting a dedicated Personal Video Recorder which is far more flexible. Then you can use the USB port for playing back movies, photos and audio and the drive doesn't have to be FAT32 formatted.

When I tried this tv I found it only timeshifts. Will not record for later viewing despite the manual suggesting it does. I think it needs to be actvated in the menu somewhere. Sorry all I can offer.

Ok I was confused by this at first.. yes you can record to a usb device....BUT...its a time shift recording ..not a PVR . Go to page 29 of the manual.. and do the part to and including check file system.. It will tell you then depending on the USB device whether it can time shift in SD or HD .. If you try to time shift later on on a HD channel and the USB Key is small eg 4Gb the Time Shift button won't work - tune to a SD channel and it will and you will get a pop up wiht controls etc.

With a time shift recorder it just caches the digital signal to the USB device for the capacity of the drive. eg with my 4Gb USB key gave me about 2 hours (SD only not HD) - once you set it off it will start caching to the usb drive and I expect, though I haven't tested it yet , when it gets to the 2 hour mark it will keep going but will only have cached the last 2 hours. While it is doing this I can fast forward/rewind/play in that moving two hour window. I use the word cache rather than record as the data stored is not saved when the USB key is removed.

So it's not a PVR - you can't save a program and watch it later. its more meant for those times you had to got out for an hour and a program is about to start.. kick off the time shift and when you come back in an hour rewind to where the program started.

Hope that clarifies things :)

try removing the UBS when you want to save what you have recorded and try plugging it into a computer.
you never know it might just work.........

Sound quality is quite acceptable for an LCD TV and better than most but no comparison to my big old Philips CRT TV. Speakers are rated at 2 x 6 watt / 6 ohm and give plenty of volume. I run mine comfortably at 22%. At 50% they are quite loud. You have the options to run through either a stereo system using the stereo RCA output or a home theatre system using the digital output.

The speakers aren't big because of the cabinet dimensions and shape, and they fire downwards. For that reason you won't get chest-thumping bass out of them. But they sound quite OK in my opinion. Audio output is quoted as 6W x 2.

Sound Quality is Great!

No

I just tried mine with various files on a 320GB WD Elements portable hard drive. It happily played Xvid AVI and MKV files, but not the DIVX file. This isn't to say that it won't play DIVX at all, because someone else here successfully played them.

Music: MP3, WMA, AAC
Video: MPG, MPEG, MP4, TS, TRP. M4v, RM but unfortunately NOT AVI (DivX / Xvid).
Pictures: JPG, BMP, PNG

Mine plays Xvid AVI, MKV, MP3, JPG and TXT files and probably others I didn't try. It refused to play the one DIVX file I tried, but others have had success with those as well.

12 months warranty. Yes you can buy more warranty. You'd have to ask Dick Smith's about the other questions.